Fractal Plane: Awakener's Pact

Chapter 2 - Life Extinguished

1

With another day of school about to start, Kazuki went back to his ways of staring at the outside. It had been quite a tiring day yesterday, from running the errands to the hectic trip back home. Hikari and her friend had fun until late night.

Something else occupied his mind for most of the day. Feeling the ID card in his pocket, he recalled the event last evening.

He recalled seeing that thug approach his new classmate and how she handily took care of business. 

Pondering about it, he felt that there is something more to her. Unwittingly, his thoughts then drifted to Shiki's words about the disappearances and beings from another dimension.

Kazuki then shook his head. 

Really? Why did I suddenly think of that. Uehara's not—

"Dazing off again? That's two days in a row, Arata."

Kazuki's drifting thoughts abruptly ended, and he glanced over and once again saw Amagi in a scene not too different from yesterday. His hand quickly left his pocket as he faced his seatmate and friend.

"Anything the matter? You seem to be overthinking something."

"Oh, it's nothing to be worried about, Amagi."

Looking for something to quickly change the topic to, he noticed that the bandage wrapped around Amagi's forearm had disappeared.

"By the way, your arm's completely healed already?" asked Kazuki.

Raising her arm with vigor, Amagi beamed her reply, "All good to go! Since you had to do something yesterday, I just decided to visit the doctor to have this checked in advance, and he gave me an a-ok!"

Amagi gave him a thumbs up. "Dr. Kagami's such a cool guy. Not only is he a genius doctor, he also works as the chief pharmacist in Aspira Hospital."

"Dr. Kagami?" thought Kazuki. It took no time at all for him to imagine a young doctor with purple hair who was eccentric and expressive. "Aspira Hospital... You mean Dr. Shin Kagami?"

"Oh yeah, that's him!" Amagi's reply came almost instantly. "He also said some weird conspiracy theories and gave me a cool bracelet to congratulate me on a quick recovery. You know him?"

"Hmmm, yeah. Hikari got hurt before, and I accompanied her there. She seems to like him for the longest time. He did spout some nutjob conspiracies about the government, the future, and all that. He was nice to Hikari, though, and on that day, he gave her a necklace that she still wears every now and then."

Kazuki now fully remembered that the one and only time he went to Dr. Kagami for consultation and how it was not his best experience. Hikari had some fun and jokes with the doctor, so it wasn't so bad all in all.

"Yoooo!"

The startled Kazuki recovered in time to look in the direction of the loud and obnoxious voice.

Barging into the class, Shiki's loud footsteps resounded as he made a headway for Kazuki's window seat before conveniently sitting on Amagi's desk.

"Yo, you saw the news this morning, the both of you?"

It's not unusual to see Shiki being excitable, but his voice had a frantic layer this time, and it caused Kazuki and Amagi to abruptly stop their conversation.

"What's wrong, Shiki?" asked Amagi in a concerned voice.

After panting to recover his breath, Shiki paused for a while before speaking.